


For the Love of All Things Hexed

by Twelve (Dodici)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, F/M, It's basically a romcom, but with chicken's blood and supernatural references, writober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 08:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21267698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodici/pseuds/Twelve
Summary: Young, inexperienced witch in training and ageless, awkward traveling alchemist defeat spooky murderous demonic entity while being stupidly in love.





	For the Love of All Things Hexed

**Author's Note:**

> This thing makes zero sense, but at least it's Halloween-y, I guess?  
Grammarly told me it was "a bit bland", thanks Grammarly for your valuable insight lmao

Trisha is the one who’s going to do it. 

“I’m a witch in training,” she says again, just to be sure. “I’m the in-training one. She’s the witch.”

“I’m an old carcass of a witch,” Pinako says, recharging her old Winchester rifle. “I can maybe keep it busy for half a minute. I’ll help you, but you’ll have to do most of the work.”

“I think he’s a him. He said he was a him,” Trisha says, pointing at Hohenheim, who’s still drawing the formula. 

“He is a him,” he says, sure and looking really professionally serious despite being also elbow-deep soaked in chicken’s blood. If they survive, Pinako is going to feed the whole village chicken’s broth for the rest of the year. 

Right now, she deadpans at the both of them. 

“Sorry for, what, misgendering the thing that’s going to kill us all?”

“Is he a thing? What is he even,” Trisha asks, lighting up the next candle with a snap of her fingers – they’re sweaty, so it’s pretty difficult. The basement is starting to smell like an entire perfume shop, too, which is honestly unheard of in Resembool; actually, everything Hohenheim-related is usually unheard of in Resembool.

“I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to bring him with me," he says, regretful.

“It’s okay,” Trisha says, and she means it. “I like when you visit, you know? Even when you take demonic entities with you.” 

Someone would say that, since the first time Hohenheim and his suitcase full of alchemical oddities stepped foot out of the train platform, Resembool has indeed suffered an ever-growing increase of odd calamities; but given the ever-growing case of the stupidly falling-in-love that got Trisha, she’s the least likely person to point it out.

Hohenheim hums, but he still sounds worried. Or maybe he's just concentrated on getting the right angle for the sigils he’s painting on the old wooden floor.

“He’s technically a homunculus, that’s why common magic doesn’t really work with him.”

“Are you saying that my goofer dust is _common_, you cockroach?” Pinako barks, from the spot closest to the door.

“Never,” Hohenheim says, because Pinako can still be pretty scary even if she’s smaller than the rifle she’s holding. “It’s just… For it to be definitely effective, we would need to add his old mortal remains to the recipe.”

“So, we are going to die,” Trisha points out, almost relieved – she wasn’t sure she was understanding the whole thing correctly, really. The day has been pretty hectic so far, what with the discovery of living, cutting shadows pretty vocally hell-bent on killing them all and the chase to the oldest, abandoned house on the remotest hill in the village. She didn’t really have the time to contemplate the consequences of her own death if not for brief moments of terror. “That would be inconvenient. And sad.”

“I won’t let you die,” Hohenheim tells her, and even with Pinako’s grumble in the background, Trisha can’t refrain from blushing; at least there aren’t enough candles to actually light up the whole basement, so no one is going to see her acting like a newbie – it’s not her fault if usually the scariest magical beings in Resembool are confused banshee who just need direction to avoid getting run over the brand new railway.

She ignites another candle with fool’s fire and lets some wax melt to get a more stable ground for the next candle.

“You better not die too, you know? There’s actually something I need to tell you,” she adds, because that must be the worst moment possible, but maybe it’s also their last moment and Trisha can’t die with this secret inside her belly – she can’t be the only person to know about it; it’s the basis of every magic, for it to be shared and believed to thrive. 

“What is it?” Hohenheim asks, hesitant and even more worried than before. Only that’s also the exact moment the homunculus chooses to shift onto their handmade protections once again; Trisha can feel his dark, growling magic creeping up, filtering through each and every one of the grains of salt they used to protect the house. It’s like a breath, cold and sharp as metal. 

“Hohenheim,” he whispers, from one of his hundred mouths. Trisha saw them before, and his hundreds of eyes too, shifting around like a shiny, purple school of fish. “Come out, you coward. Are you really using these ignorant witches as human shields? Do they even know what you are?”

“A jerk, most definitely,” Pinako says. “But we already knew that.”

Trisha would have sworn she heard the homunculus scoff – it would have almost been funny if they weren’t also going to die. 

“Come out,” the homunculus says, ignoring her. “Don’t make _me_ come in.”

“Or you could maybe just leave us alone?” Trisha proposes, lighting candles a bit faster when Hohenheim signals her with some swift gestures. 

There aren’t enough; the salt screeches like it’s been stepped on and the door creaks. 

Pinako is still shouldering the rifle even if they all know that not even silver bullets are going to stand a chance against something like _that_.

So, they’re definitely going to die, aren’t they?

“I’m pregnant,” Trisha says, in a whisper around the big lump in her throat.

Hohenheim turns towards her with eyes as big as lightbulbs the exact same moment Pinako lets out a very heartfelt expletive; then the hinges creak once more and the door slams open, blowing away the salt protection like it wasn’t even there. 

There’s a pause, cold and dry under Trisha’s nostrils – she realizes she isn’t breathing when something else does, and the candlelight flickers like it’s been collectively sucked in by giant bellows.

Then the shadows start moving on their own, swimming on the floor and the ceiling, creeping up the walls like moving, grinning tapestry. 

“So you made me come all the way over here and what,” the homunculus says, and the voice comes from each of his mouths. “You thought you could trap me inside that little abracadabra of yours? You’re even stupider than Father makes you out to be.”

Hoheneheim is still standing at the edge of the formula, but the creature is everywhere and Trisha really isn’t sure she’s going to even understand when—

The shadows spurt from the walls like spilled oil to attack Hohenheim as if Trisha and Pinako weren’t even there – Hohenheim told them, that the homunculus would have been so arrogant and full of himself that he wouldn’t have paid attention to a couple country witches, brushing them aside as too low to even register on his radar. 

And it makes sense, really. Trisha isn’t a talented witch; she had mastered a bunch of spells during her training and no one is what anyone would call impressive: there's the one that helps crops grow faster, the one that increases humidity in the ground or in the air – and that too is actually just used to help crops grow, because crops are a pretty essential matter there in Resembool. She studied one to dry-clean clothes, one to heal small wounds, and the stupidest thing which is vital in a place where electricity is still a flickering commodity: power candles and lamps so that she can light up an entire room. 

Magic tingles at the pads of her fingertips and the light grows in bubbles from the candles’ heads. It spreads in a compact glow so fast that the shadows open their eyes in surprise only to close them up again, fast, with a hiss of annoyance. He doesn’t know – they can read it right in his eyes – he doesn’t know what happened when he opens them once again.

“You are extremely pesky,” he says, in a growl. “It means I’ll have to kill you all, say goodbye to-“

Trisha holds her breath, froze, but the black, sharp spike directed towards her stopped mid hair. Blocked in the light, it looks like a blade made of obsidian. 

“What,” the homunculus asks, and if he had eyebrows, they would all be frowning right now. 

Hohenheim smiles, and points at the way larger formula he painted on the ceiling, completely visible now that the light has managed to push all the shadows there inside its perimeter.

“What,” the homunculus repeats, _angrier_. 

Hohenheim doesn’t answer. He smiles again, and flails a hand; the formula activates in blue, sparkling light.

*

There must be a spell to remove chicken’s blood and melted wax from floors, but Pinako decided that cleaning all up using elbow grease alone would have helped Trisha clear her mind or something wise on that line.

It still looks a lot like a punishment, but Trisha has had worse. The whole day has been the actual definition of worse.

“So,” Hohenheim starts, emptying another vial of some alchemically aggressive product inside the bucket. He’s managed to enhance the power of Pinako’s good old detergent formula just right, so they spent quite some time discussing properties of chemicals instead of talking about the _thing_.

“When you said…” He looks scared and angular in the dim light of the basement, beard and hair still reeking of blood and dust and that viscous purple substance that exploded from the shadow when he trapped it inside his formula to “send it away”, since apparently he couldn’t really kill it. What a day, Trisha is seriously missing those banshees.

“I mean, you meant. What I wanted to ask was…”

“Of course it’s yours,” Trisha says, in a cutting whisper. She wrings the sponge out before slapping it again on the floor – those glyphs aren’t going to come out otherwise. “Who else’s could he be?”

“He?” Hohenheim asks, tentative and just as weirded out as Trisha herself. She stops, still kneeling down, sudsy water pooling under the sponge. 

“Well,” she says, one hand on her belly and a frown on her forehead. “He’ll definitely be a boy, that much I can tell. I may be a witch in training, but I’m still a witch,” she adds, with a bit of pride, because she helped a supposedly all-powerful alchemist to beat a supposedly all-powerful shadow-creature. She’s not half bad, thank you very much.

“I didn’t tell you to hold you accountable or whatever. We did it together, but I knew you’re a traveling alchemist or whatever it is that you really are. I just thought we were going to die and I kinda… Oh, for the love of all things hexed, what are you crying about now!”

Hohenheim has quite a big nose – he sniffs so hard Trisha is sure he’s going to die of dust poisoning or something. 

He shakes his head, but he can’t seem to be able to stop _leaking_; his sponge falls down inside the bucket with a full _plop_ and Trisha ends up squeezed hard in his arms, blushing like a dumbass, feeling a bit like crying too. 

Touching Hohenheim always gives her that _golden_ feeling, like she’s been wrapped up in a beam of sunlight.

“We should buy the house,” he says, inside her hair after a bit of silence and clammy sobs.

“What?” Trisha asks, breathless.

“The house,” he repeats. “This house, we should buy it.”

They separate enough to watch each other in the eyes, and he’s just as serious as always. He really is a dumbass, just like Trisha thought – just like she hoped.

She sighs and throws a glance at the ceiling, where the biggest formula is still gleaming, dark red and ominous.

“The abandoned house we used to lure in the homunculus who wanted to kill us?” she asks, thinking hard.

Hohenheim is frowning.

“It does sound crazy spelled out like this.”

Trisha nods, chewing on the inside of her cheek. It does sound crazy – it is. No one would buy that house ever, it would be just plain mental to any good, respectable citizen of this thriving Country.

“We should stop cleaning right now,” she says, firm in front of Hohenheim's puzzled expression. “No, I’m serious. We could get an awesome deal, buying a house where supposedly dark alchemical rituals happened!”

“We… oh,” Hohenheim says, he too blinking at the ceiling. “You’re right.”

She smiles at his face, still caked with blood and dust and tears, and she thinks he’s never looked that handsome, especially when he lays on the floor with her, so that they can laugh like a couple of dumbasses at the ominous formula on their head, talking about house prices and parenting and how everything sounds a thousand times scarier than any shadow monster could ever hope to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Writober2019 killed me. This thing fills the prompt #supernatural from the pumpFic list by[ Fanwriter.it](https://twitter.com/fanwriterit)


End file.
